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The Death of Voting Rights: the Legal Disenfranchisement of Minority Voters

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The Death of Voting Rights: the Legal Disenfranchisement of Minority Voters Case Western Reserve Law Review Volume 48 Issue 4 Article 3 1998 The Death of Voting Rights: The Legal Disenfranchisement of Minority Voters Virginia E. Hench Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/caselrev Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Virginia E. Hench, The Death of Voting Rights: The Legal Disenfranchisement of Minority Voters, 48 Case W. Rsrv. L. Rev. 727 (1998) Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/caselrev/vol48/iss4/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Journals at Case Western Reserve University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Case Western Reserve Law Review by an authorized administrator of Case Western Reserve University School of Law Scholarly Commons. CASE WESTERN RESERVE LAW REVIEW VOLUME 48 SUMMER 1998 NUMBER 4 ARTICLES THE DEATH OF VOTING RIGHTS: THE LEGAL DISENFRANCHISEMENT OF MINORITY VOTERS Virginia E. Hencht OUTLINE Introduction . ............................... 730 I. The Cycle of Minority Disenfranchisement Begins ................................. 731 A. From De Jure to De Facto Disenfranchisement ..................... 732 1. Reconstruction: Intentional, Indirect Disenfranchisement .................. 733 t Assistant Professor, The William S. Richardson School of Law, The University of Hawai'i-Mnoa. © Virginia E. Hench 1997-All Rights Reserved. Many thanks to Profes- sor Eric K. Yamamoto and Professor Taunya Lovell Banks for their comments on early drafts. Thanks also to Gwen Fitimaula Tauiili-Langlilde and Teresa A. Favilla-Solano for their outstanding research assistance, and to Steve Bordenkircher and the staff of the Case Western Reserve Law Review for their hard work and editorial assistance. 728 CASE WESTERN RESERVE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 48:727 2. Felon Disenfranchisement Laws: Jim Crow's Last Hurrah ...................... 738 B. The Voting Rights Act: A Temporary High Point ............................... 744 1. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act ....... 746 2. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act ....... 747 C. Dismantling The Voting Rights Act .......... 749 1. Conflating Individual and Community Interests: Wesley v. Collins .................... 750 2. Section 5 and Non-Retrogression: Accepting Minimal Compliance ................. 752 II. Dismantling Equal Protection: Innocence and Intentional Harm ................................. 752 A. The Rise of "Color Blindness".. ............. 755 1. City of Richmond v. JA. Croson Co........ 757 2. Whitcomb v. Chavis ................... 759 3. City of Mobile v. Bolden ............... 760 4. Hunter v. Underwood ................. 762 Im. Completing the Cycle: The Death of Voting Rights ................................. 764 A. The Crackdown on Minorities: Disproportionate Minority Incarceration as Vote Dilution ........ 765 B. Richardson v. Ramirez ................... 768 C. "Compactness" and the "Ghetto" Requirement .... 771 1998] DISENFRANCHISEMENT OF MINOMrIY VOtS 729 1. Thornburg v. Gingles ................ 772 2. Shaw v. Reno ..................... 775 3. Miller v. Johnson ................... 777 D. Bush v. Vera: Requiem for Minority Voting Rights Remedies ............................ 779 IV. Conclusion: Ending the Cycles: A Return to Equal Protection ............................... 783 CASE WESTERN RESERVE LAW REVIEW [V/ol. 48:727 "The Convention's goal is to establish white supremacy in the State, within the limits imposed by the Federal Consti- tution." John B. Knox, Alabama Delegate' INTRODUCION Minority voting rights are dead-the majority rules. In the last century and a half, minority access to the ballot box has been, if not killed, then at least rendered largely unenforceable by a combi- nation of racial bias in the criminal justice system and the Supreme Court's so-called "color-blind" jurisprudence, with the result that meaningful minority access to the electoral process has been great- ly diminished. Minority disenfranchisement has moved in cycles, from intentional, direct, de jure disenfranchisement before the Civil War, through indirect means of exclusion (including felon disen- franchisement) following Reconstruction and passage of the Fif- teenth Amendment, to the United States Supreme Court's "color- blind" jurisprudence, which has interacted with the last remnants of de jure disenfranchisement to complete the cycle of exclusion. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the Supreme Court has come full circle, conjuring up language and imagery more appropriate to the nineteenth century's Dred Scott and Plessy Courts. The Court's color blindness has interacted with historical remnants of intention- al discrimination so as to all but nullify the Voting Rights Act2 and the equal protection clause, perpetuating the legacy of inten- tional disenfranchisement as effectively as any post-civil war "black code." Many scholars have addressed specific changes and remedies that might make remedies more fair or feasible, or make the Vot- ing Rights Act more effective.3 This Article explores the premise Official Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Alabama, May 21, 1901, to Sept. 3d, 1901 (Second Day) (1901) (statement of Delegate John B. Knox concerning convict disenfranchisement provisions). 2 Pub. L. No. 89-110, 79 Stat. 437 (1965) (codified as amended at 42 U.S.C. §§ 1971, 1973 to 1973bb-1 (1994)). 3, See, e.g., Pamela S. Karlan, Just Politics? Five Not So Easy Pieces of the 1995 Term, 34 Hous. L. REv. 289 (1997); see also LAM GtJnlmR, THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORrY 69, 72 (1994) [hereinafter GuINER, TYRANNY OF THE MAJORrIy] (arguing that the Voting Rights Act should embody the civil rights movement's "transformative vision of politics"); Lani Guinier, The Triumph of Tokenism: The Voting Rights Act and the 1998] DISENFRANCHISEMENT OF MINORIY VOTS 731 that the Supreme Court's "color-blind" jurisprudence has interacted with systematic problems such as the disproportionate criminalization of minorities and the last remaining Jim Crow laws' to all but nullify the Voting Rights Act's mission to provide meaningful ballot access for minority populations. This Article examines the cycle of exclusion from the Civil War to the present. It begins by examining the Civil War and Reconstruction-era Jim Crow laws and the agonizingly slow process of establishing meaningful access to the ballot box that culminated with the Vot- ing Rights Act. The Article next examines the systematic disman- tling of minority voting rights through the interaction of Jim Crow felon disenfranchisement laws and the Supreme Court's "color- blind" jurisprudence. Finally, the Article proposes that any changes to the Voting Rights Act will be illusory unless the Court aban- dons the fiction of the "color-blind" Constitution and returns to an equal protection analysis of any procedure that burdens minority groups from achieving effective access to the ballot box. I. THE CYCLE OF MINORITY DISENFRANCHISEMENT BEGINS "This plan of popular suffrage will eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this State in less than five years, so that in no single county of the Commonwealth will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government." Carter Glass, Virginia Delegate5 Theory of Black Electoral Success, 89 MICH. L. REV. 1077, 1084-85 (1991) [hereinafter Guinier, Triumph of Tokenism] (analyzing different voting strategies in the context of the civil rights movement's quest for human dignity). For a detailed and thoughtful proposal for a Voting Rights Act analysis of the impact of disenfranchising ex-felons on minority voting strength, see Alice E. Harvey, Ex-Felon Disenfranchisement and Its Influence on the Black Vote: The Need for a Second Look, 142 U. PA. L. REv. 1145 (1994). 4. The term "Jim Crow" reportedly first appeared in the North in the 1830s as a song title in a minstrel show in which white performers performed in "blackface" and parodied blacks in a derogatory manner. By the 1840s, it was applied to racially segregat- ed Massachusetts railroad cars and became a generic term for discriminatory race laws. See generally C. VANN WOODWARD, THm STRANGE CAREER OF JIM CROW 7 n.68 (1966). 5. 2 REPORT OF THE PROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVEN- TION OF VIRGINIA 3076 (1906) [hereinafter VIRGINIA PROCEEDINGS] (statement of Delegate Carter Glass). Delegate Glass, who later became a United States senator, said the purpose of the law was to eliminate "every Negro voter who can be gotten rid of." Benno C. Schmidt, Jr., Principle and Prejudice: The Supreme Court and Race in the Progressive Era. Part 1: The Heyday of Jim Crow, 82 COLuM. L. REV. 835, 846 (1982); see also John Hope Franklin, "Legal" Disenfranchisement of the Negro, 26 J. NEGRO EDuc. 241, CASE WESTERN RESERVE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 48:727 Race-based exclusion of minority voters is long standing and deeply rooted. Restrictions on minority voting access have gone through three distinct phases: outright, explicit disenfranchisement; indirect disenfranchisement through adoption of laws and practices that burdened minority voting; and most recently, the Supreme Court's systematic destruction of all remedies for anything but outright, explicit disenfranchisement. A. From De Jure to De Facto Disenfranchisement "[Tlhe most dangerous threat to democracy is the Ne- gro.... The Negro is an uncontrollable objector to our [all-white] ticket." The Commercial, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, 18926 Passage of the Thirteenth Amendment did not automatically
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